Peter gave a short laugh.
“And there was Miss Bingham hanging over the banisters and fearing the worst.”
“I have never really liked her,” said Lucy Craddock. “She asks so many questions, and if you don’t tell her, she finds out just the same. And I’m afraid, my dear boy, you spoke very harshly to poor Mavis. She was dreadfully upset because her dress had got stained when she knelt down by Ross, and she was afraid that you would notice it. She cut out the stained piece and burned it-”
“Yes, and left the rest of the dress pushed in amongst Mary’s clothes for the police to find. You know, Lucinda, I honestly don’t think that Mavis has got a brain, or if she has, it is definitely sub-human.”
Lucy Craddock shook her head.
“A pretty girl like Mavis doesn’t need to have a brain, my dear. Gentlemen really prefer it.”
“And that brings us back to our starting-point,” said Peter. “The brainlessness of Mavis may be the reason why she has disappeared, but for the life of me I can’t see-”
“You don’t think she’s eloped with Bobby?” said Lee.
“Well, I don’t know. Up to Tuesday, when everyone would have liked her to get engaged to Bobby, Mavis wouldn’t look at him. Would a warrant for his arrest make her feel that she loved him passionately and must incontinently elope?”
“It might,” said Lee.
He looked at her, and she blushed.
“Meaning that if they arrest me, you will marry me at the gallows’ foot.”
“My dear boy!” said Lucy Craddock in a horrified voice.
Peter laughed.
“Well, I don’t think Mavis would. Anyhow, here are the facts. Bobby went off to his stockbroking office as usual on Thursday morning. Then he went out to lunch and never came back. By the time old Lamb had made up his mind to arrest him he wasn’t there to be arrested, and so far he hasn’t been traced. A ham-headed mutt, but I still don’t think he shot Ross. Now our cousin Mavis was all present and correct on Thursday. She had breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea in the Grey ménage, a good deal of the time being taken up with painful family scenes of the first magnitude. A happy English home!”
“It is no good being too strict with young people,” said Lucy Craddock. “And I am afraid it wasn’t a very happy home.”
“Well, she was still there on Friday morning. She had been served with a summons for the inquest, and Uncle Ernest and Aunt Gladys were preparing to support her through the ordeal. She went out for what Aunt Gladys described as a breath of air at about eleven o’clock, and nobody has seen her since. I can’t make that fit in with Bobby at all. I think she was fed up with Aunt Gladys and Uncle Ernest, and she lost her nerve and bolted.”
Fresh tears started from Lucy Craddock’s eyes.
“Oh, my dears-you don’t think she has done something dreadful!”
Peter’s eyebrows went up. He said in the voice she liked least,
“In plain English, has she committed suicide? Calm yourself, Lucinda. Mavis is a great deal too fond of Mavis to let her run the very slightest risk. She really does love her, you know, and I’m quite sure she will do her very best to look after her and keep her safe. She won’t be very clever about it, but you can’t blame the poor girl for that. She’ll do her best. Anyhow, she appears to have cashed a cheque for fifteen pounds before she left, and if she’d been going to jump into the river she wouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, my dear, I’m so thankful,” said Lucy Craddock. She dabbed with her handkerchief. “Lee dear, I could do with another cup of tea.”
Chapter XXX
The funeral took place next day. Since Lucy Craddock insisted on attending, Lee could do no less. The utmost efforts to keep time and place from becoming known had not prevented a crowd from assembling. Lucy wept, Lee looked as if she was going to faint, and Peter wondered when they would all stop living in a nightmare and be able to return to the decencies of private life.
When it was over he went to see Inspector Lamb, and came back from the interview a good deal depressed in spirits.
“I thought I was on the ground floor, but there’s a basement, and old Lamb has just let me down into it with a bump.”
He cast himself down on the floor beside Lee and laid his head against her knee.
“You don’t feel as if you’d like to kiss me and say a few nice womanly things like ‘Darling, we’ve still got each other,’ and, ‘It is always darkest before the dawn’?”
Lee smiled a little wanly.
“Peter, if I kiss you I shall probably begin to cry, and that would be about the last straw, because Lucy never stops, does she?”
“I shall divorce you if you cry.”
“You can’t divorce me till we are married.”
Peter pulled down one of her hands and put his cheek against it.
“ ‘A Bride’s Cynicism, or Modern Outlook on Marriage,’ ” he remarked. “You know, if Lucinda heard you talk like that, she’d have a fit. You’ve got a lovely, soft, cool hand.”
“Have I? I’m glad. What did the Lamb say that cast you down into a basement?”
“He’d had a report from Birmingham -about Aggie, you know-and it’s no good. She’s got a room in quite a respectable sort of lodging-house-been there about a week-and the police and at least three people are prepared to swear that she was there on Tuesday night, because she was taken ill and waked the landlady up at two in the morning, and the husband-the landlady’s husband, not Aggie’s-went round and knocked up a chemist to get some stuff made up for her. Some kind of a heart attack, and she’d run out of what she takes for it.”
“That seems very convenient,” said Lee slowly.
Peter twisted round so that he could look at her.
“Do you think it’s too convenient?”
She drew a long breath.
“I don’t know, but-two in the morning is such a frightfully difficult time to have an alibi for. Why should Aggie have one? It-it-feels queer to me.”
He sat right up.
“Darling, your head’s going round. Aggie was in Birmingham on Tuesday night having a heart attack unless (a) her respectable landlady, (b) her respectable landlady’s respectable husband, and (c) one Mrs. Coltham, who had the room next door and helped minister to the afflicted, are all perjuring themselves black in the face, and really there’s on reason why they should, because none of them had so much as set eyes on her a week before. They weren’t very enthusiastic about her either. Miss La Fay -she’s stuck to her stage name by the bye-Miss La Fay gave a good deal of trouble. They had nothing against her, but theatrical ladies weren’t really in their line, they said. So there we are-Aggie Crouch alias Rosalie La Fay is a wash-out. I shall have to concentrate on Miss Bingham.”
“There isn’t any news about Bobby Foster, I suppose?”
“Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time-they’re bound to get him. Besides, if there’s anything stupid he can do he’ll probably do it, and so will Mavis. There’s no news of her either.”
“You know,” said Lee, “I think Bobby did it. I mean, he wouldn’t if he’d been sober, but if he was pretty far gone when you sent him home at twelve, he probably didn’t in the least know what he was doing by two in the morning. He seems to have gone on having one drink after another, and by the time he got round here-well, he mightn’t really have known what he was doing, and all those things he’d been saying about knocking Ross’s head off and shooting him-don’t you see, the idea might have taken charge. People who wouldn’t hurt a fly when they’re sober do horrible things when they’re drunk.”
There was a knock on the outer door. Peter got to his feet.
“If it’s a policeman, Lucy’s lying down, you are completely prostrated, and I am raving. I shall give an exhibition performance of biting the hall linoleum.”